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Month January 2015

Yesterday I was waiting for a county inspector (he arrived right at the time he said he would and was the nicest person). I was thinking about the IoT concept and wondering if eventually there would beyond the Internet of Bling be the Internet of People. For example the cable company says we will be there between 12-5 which frankly is always a joke. Instead they say we will be there between 12-5 and then the IoT sensor the tech wears tells you not only which order he is going in but when you will have service or repair. IE the internet of people.

IoT wearable gives the option of the IoP or Internet of people. There have been applications over the past couple of years that have qualified notifications. That means that if you are running late it only notifies the peo0ple in your next meeting that you are late. The IoP would be a sensor designed to connect to your cellular device and notify again only those people that you are running late.

We could argue that is still an IoT solution. It is effectively an IoT offering. But it is applied in a new way. A sensor that knows where you are, a cellular phone and calendar than knows where you are supposed to be integrated so that the people that need to know where you are, know.

Of course there are some serious downsides and there would need to be some new privacy laws enacted that modify the impact of not IoP but also IoT itself.

Privacy Law: The whereabouts of a person are the property of that person. No one can infringe upon the publication of that person’s whereabouts in any form. If you hack someone’s calendar and discover where they are supposed to be and then hack the sensor to know where they actually are that would be a crime. Not a slap on the wrist misdemeanor either. There is no way to stalk someone without violating their rights. This law would codify the rights of the person being stalked and create valid and significant legal impact on the stalker.

Next on our privacy law changes would be the need to increase the legal ramifications of modifying information and a company as well. Where the individual gets stalked, companies face industrial espionage and of course government intervention. Having a unified set of laws that protect the rights of a company to build and create unique IP and artifacts is critical. We cannot let the Internet become a series of fortified states. The value of that reality is so small that it has to be prevented. If a country intercedes with a company that isn’t based in their country and hasn’t violated international law (has to be international law, if it is the laws of that country those can be quickly changed to make it illegal to innovate without giving the government the IP).

Innovation must be protected. Individuals must be protected. Companies and IP must be protected. We a set of agreed upon international laws that will allow this new Internet of People to be maintained regardless of where you are in the world. There will be outliers that do not conform to these laws and the international community has to consider the reality of what to do with that. No government likes Wikileaks. The reality of that site makes governments very nervous. For the most part (at least I hope this is true) they are going after the founder of Wikileaks for suspected child pornography and not the creation of Wikileaks. My gut says in the case of someone creating something that in the end is difficult for governments to accept that should be tried in the world court rather than any one country. Which is the last piece of the law changes. Removing the jurisdiction of governments from people that are developing new IP, as long as that IP does not directly threaten the lives and health of the people in that country. This law would not protect someone perfecting an airborne version of small pox. It would allow Julian Assange (founder of Wikileaks) his day in court, it would just be the world court.

The reality of the Internet of people proposal is that effectively it is nearly impossible to legislate morality. This will have to be a managed implementation of universal or global law. If you travel outside the countries that support the law then you don’t take any technology with you. You simply arrive and stay in that country and do not use anything other than the local technology.

It’s the next wave of IoT. How do we in the end protect people using devices to make their lives better from having that used against them by somebody nefarious.

I like to look ahead for uses of technology. Projects that in the end will be not only impactful but also game changers. Jibo is one of those projects. http://www.myjibo.com/ is there site. The project includes several things that I think will make it extremely valuable.

It is autonomous in the sense that it can operate within its parameters without requiring significant set-up (well that is the project goal at the very least). That makes it ideal as a companion for older folks living alone. They may not be as technically savvy as others but a pre configured Jibo can be placed in their homes to provide oversight.

Jibo is the front or tip of the wave though. One of my favorite novellas was Bicentennial Man written by Isaac Asimov and brilliantly brought to the silver screen by Robin Williams. The story of a robot seeking to become what he or she or it wasn’t remains touching. As I said Jibo is the tip of the spear, the first part of the wave to reach shore.

I do see more game changers coming. More shifts to the right in technology that are going to be in the end things we remember long after the market moves on. I’ve broken the IoT market into three distinct categories the first being Wearable, the second being Stayable and third being too large to wear and but something you need to have Portable.

In the past five years Portable has come the furthest. Yes I realize that is not only a statement but also a double entendre. Portable before the wearable explosion was in fact the only device with you so it would actually have traveled the most physical distance as well as having come the furthest because the portable phone revolution has in the end created the reality of the IoT.

Wearable technologies are the fast charging technologies. Stayables in the end are the adaptation of sensors to the home and then to whatever publication system you need to consume the data, But wearable presents many changes.

Where in the end does wearable go? On Cloudtweaks I posted a concept I called the Internet of bling. An expansion of the wearable market to flashing LED’s and gold chains absorbing the existing bling and pushing into wearable technology. You can Find my IoB article here. In the end it will happen at least for a time that the IoT becomes the IoB.

Bling will pass into oblivion though long before wearables are done changing the market. The new Apple Watch announced recently may have as many as 10 sensors built into it. You can quite quickly outfit your portable device with many more than 10 sensors and with the connection between the watch and your portable device now create a sensor array. As a good friend of mine says “then you have to analyze that data.”

What does a sudden drop in barometric pressure mean? First off you can create that problem by climbing a mountain. The pressure drops as you cross the various plateaus going up. But if you are near sea level and the barometric pressure drops very quickly it is highly recommended that you either get indoors or find your umbrella. In the Cloudtweaks article shared above I led with the concept of an automated umbrella. With a built in moisture sensor it would automatically open. Then I realized like most people my umbrella is in my bag and I don’t grab it until after the rain is falling. An open umbrella at that point is well pointless as you can’t get it out of the bag open.

Imagine opening the closet of the future. “Dave, grab your coat its going to rain today.” the voice says to you. “And Dave, close the pod bay door on your way out.” Its rare when I get to work in a HAL 9000 reference. The cacophony of sensors that seek your attention may become deafening in the end. “I need this. Dave please note this. Don’t forget to do this. My batteries are low. My optics are clouded. I am running low of milk.”

Eventually the smart home will move towards a notification system that has variables. The system will identify which family member you are and provide you with the alerts in the style you like. Then it will provide a list to the parents or managers of the home as to what didn’t get done and what did get done in the style they like.

No astronaut will be stuck on the wrong side of the pod bay door in the future.

Today you can say that in the kitchen of our house and the new Amazon remote speaker will search Amazon prime and play smooth Jazz selections. I know that request works every time because that is what Nick listens to when he cooks.

“Find movies starring Steve Martin.”

That is one I’ve used with the FrieTV it works very well.

“Siri find Busra Thai Restaurant in Reston Virginia”

That is another one I have used – also works very well. You just can’t find parking when you get there.

In the voice controlled home of tomorrow, and for the first time in my life I actually mean tomorrow as in within the next 12 months not 10 years out, we will be able to connect and communicate naturally with our homes. The Amazon FireTV and the Microsoft Xbox One Kinect get us very close. Samsung has technology in the space and there is Siri.

I would say the response rate starts at about 70% right now. A higher failure rate is often found in loud rooms. I have yet in my life found a space where there wasn’t ambient noise so the failure rate is pretty universal. Honestly I think Amazon is on to something with a Microphone in the remote. That increases the reliability considerably.

Voice combined with motion and VR makes for an interesting future.

The funny thing is the number of stumbles we’ve had on the way to voice control. Plus I can imagine the living room of the future (next week perhaps or my house Friday night of this week in fact) where people are yelling at their televisions. Turn off, change channel, raise the volume cause the old guy can’t hear (me). People complain that the media technology of today creates distance between people wait until you are yelling at your TV to change the channel.

Actually in a way that is taking us back to the past. My dad used to yell at me sometimes to change the channel on the TV. Of course I had to get up, walk over to the TV and twist the dial to provide the right channel but it is virtually the same concept. I was the voice controlled remote control. (My grandfather had a remote for his TV it was amazing not to have to get up every 30 minutes just to change the channel!)

I’ve been playing with Windows 10 and eagerly awaiting the opportunity to play with Cortana. I don’t have a windows phone but I do like the voice recognition my daughter gets with her windows phone. Siri drives me nuts with a failure rate as high at 40% at times. Add car noise and that failure rate seems to almost double.

I wonder in the end if Cortana will allow me to replace Dragon or other voice input systems. That is the future that lies just beyond reach currently. I true digital assistant. Regardless of the device you have in front of you (IoT) you your voice can control it. X control my TV and turn on the IU Basketball game (oh wait, not the way they are playing right now too frustrating turn on ESPN Sports center). Or turn on my home PC. Connect to my home automation system. Check my inbox anything new?

Voice command will bring us ever closer to the 1984 dream. A computer that works with us and next to us a computer for the rest of us.

I post that from time to time on my various social media sites. Just the two words I wonder. Because frankly I do wonder and do wonder often. Not that they are deep thoughts meant to change the world. Rather that I have the thoughts and I don’t know what to do with them. Or at times they are deep thoughts and I wonder why they came to me.

Yesterday I was think about a heated driveway. You know simply switch on the heater in the concrete of your driveway and when you wake up there is no snow to remove. It all melted. You would need a driveway that was elevated in the center so that in the end the water would run off to the sides and not pool where your driveway meets the street (that would result in an ice skating rink). Why couldn’t you do that? You can in the end but it isn’t very practical in terms of money spent. But sometimes that is the quality of the wondering.

Other times I get a topic in my head and I start expanding the concept. Recently on this blog that has been the concept of IoT. I broke IoT into three distinct categories (wearable, stayable and portable). One of the wonders for me was the automatic umbrella. The minute it detects rain it opens, I kyboshed that idea when I realized like most people I keep my umbrella in my bag so auto opening would in the end only be messy. Based on the Andreessen Horowitz report yesterday though I wondered about the interconnection of 15 of the projects they detailed.

What in the end would the impact of a connected world be?

First we are connected today. By connected I mean the future projects that were detailed by A-H in their report. The 16th project was crowd funding, while you could connect that in the end it is consumer of connection not a connected system. That was the missing piece for me that I realized last night. A connected system is what I am looking for. IoT, medical devices and ultimately cloud both specific and personal driving secure containers. In the end it as simple as connected systems.

The complexity lies in the connection itself rather than the systems. In my book The Syncverse I introduced a concept I called the Myverse. A place in the end where I could control the connections to me. A place where my mobile medical records would be stored. Not my complete history just the things a doctor having to preform emergency surgery would need to know (allergies, current prescriptions and previous traumatic events). My company could share relevant information that I needed for my job into my Myverse. Friends could view things I shared from my Myverse to their Myverse like photos, videos and other fun things.

I came to realize that the connections need to have a home. That in effect the reality of connectivity is the creation of the interconnections. In order to have interconnections there has to be a control system and model. For example my Myverse could include home security, business security and information about the world around me. I might let Waze or CoPilot publish into my Myverse the traffic that I am going to see. The way I do that is I publish not only my location data but also my calendar to only those applications.

Just-in-time data could appear in my Myverse from my company related to events on my calendar. (you are seeing X customer, here are their last 10 orders). Companies that today provide managed information could continue to do so. Offering subscriptions to the data feeds they have would be a great way to move the world of print books to the digital age. The kindle becoming the digital research device – connected to libraries. Imagine libraries that are no longer buildings filled with books but instead are wi-fi hotspots with chairs and couches. They could be much smaller in the end.

The reality of interconnection in the end is you have to have a starting point. In The Syncverse I brought up the Myverse as a great starting point. It is effectively still a great place to start. It isn’t in the end about presenting all the information at once rather it is about presenting the information the person needs when they need it.

Its interesting to me that one of the huge components of the new Holocam from Microsoft is the interaction between that device and 3d printers. I was talking about the impact of VR on 3d print more than a year ago. The connections are beginning.

Interestingly there was a report shared on Linkedin from Andreessen Horowitz on their top 16 trends for 2015 and beyond. I find their list interesting mostly because I’ve blogged about most of the components they discussed either on this or another of my blogs.

In reviewing the post (follow the link above) I find I agree with the 16 trends they have selected. I do think they could consider much more of an impact – for example while VR is cool today the impact it will have on the “sensorization” of the enterprise and 3d printing make it even more interesting. Imagine a Minority Report (movie by Stephen Spielberg) enterprise security system that mixed virtual and physical security systems into a single viewable system. Imagine also, the smaller more agile VR helmet you could don to view that system.

The report shows the trends. I think in the end the real value of forwarding looking views is the interconnections. Where security and application containers merge with VR infrastructures to support not only a real time view but the ability to deploy counter measures in a VR reality. Where the vulnerability’s of your infrastructure are mapped out before you and you can see what could stop the attacker. The best security isn’t making the right move every time. The best security is when you make the attacker guess correctly 7, 8 or 9 times. With a VR security view you can change the next question on the fly so that the attacker in the end now has to guess correctly questions they had already answered that now have a new answer.

Within the interconnections is where the reality of innovation lives. One of the points of the articles is the connection today between non-medical programmers and the medical profession. Devices brought to the market that are written by people that don’t practice medicine but instead are IT professionals. That interconnection today has actually changed the medical profession but pushing that data further out, into the Internet of things creates an even greater connection.

Connecting trends creates a very interesting reality. Unification is a game that often goes unrewarded. Einstein chased the unifying string theory for the last 40 years of his life. In the end he was unsuccessful in bringing all things physics together. The same is true for the Andreessen Horowitz list. They have 16 trends that are highly interconnected but are not linked today. Some of the interconnections don’t have stable realities yet. None are beyond the capabilities we have today simply beyond the vision that has been laid out.

Still that is my quest. To join together the 16 wind mills presented into a unified single view. Most likely connecting the realities with VR. Image for a moment an IT security group in the future. They step into the VR room and evaluate the threat to the enterprise. They see in one part of the network a red spot that is growing. They quickly shut down the applications running in that space and move the services to another network connection. The launch a security bot attack on the growing threat. Then they restart the application containers in a new environment and change all the passwords quickly. Users systems are prompted for the new security paradigm. The uses computer checks with the secure fob that checks with data produced in the known users home via a remote sensor. The user never knows they were logged out and logged back in.

On the other side of the world a young 14 year girl has a great idea for a better way to play a board game she loves. She submits her idea to the crowd funding sties (all of them at once) and quickly finds a world wide audience of other 14 year old girls that also love to play that board game. Her new company is up and running, and she reaches out to the virtual manufacturing company to begin producing her new product. All from a desk in Indonesia.

All 16 A-H projects are interconnected to each other. We just have see the connections and in the end find the path to make them real.

I have a few more ethics posts planned and will try to get back to doing those once a month on the IASA site. There is an interesting gap today in the area of organizational ethics. At some point I may dive into that pool as well.

Abrupt subject change (for a lot of reasons).

I classified IoT objects into three categories on my CloudTweaks blog awhile ago. Stayable technology is anything you leave wherever you stay i.e. stuff that is in your office, or stuff that you leave in your home and access remotely. Wearable being the items you can wear and that connect and either display information (screen as a service) or collect information (sensors) and then finally the portable devices we use (cellular etc.). I think there are three more categories that expand each of the three definitions I’ve laid out already.

The first one is easy. Any sensor that produces data (Consumption). For most homes that represents a sensor connected to your home furnace (Control4 or NEST are two automation examples) and maintains your established temperature. It may give you additional data (Co2, CO levels) but its primary function to to engage with and maintain the temperature in your home. It shares that information with you.

My second new category is presentation. This is any device that produces data (weather station) and at the same time consumes data (national weather service feed) to present to the consumer a unified view of the overall impact of the information. The presentation of the sensor data is a critical as the sensor data is originally. The weather station I use is NetATMO. they actually have a map view where I can view what every NetATMO system near me is seeing as well. Why? sometimes the difference between rain, freezing rain and snow is only ten miles and if you can view a map that shows where the temperature change is, you can plan better.

Our final new category is borrowed from John Boyd’s OODA loops and represents he orientation within the loop. Once you have the data and you move beyond presentation to data evaluation you have the orientation process. At that point it isn’t just presenting the data as a weather station does its helping the user orient their perception so that in the end they have a better chance of assimilating the data and acting on it.

These three new categories are a work in progress. I’ve thought about them for the past couple of days and so may change them quite a bit over the next few days. The concept is not only what is the sensor doing but also what are you doing with the sensor data.

UV data is great when you are outdoors. It isn’t as relevant when you are inside the office or your home. Temperature data inside isn’t as critical as outdoor temperature data unless there is a large fluctuation in the indoor temperature. One of my first bosses in the IT space once said “a data center you can cook eggs in isn’t ever a good thing.”

In the end defining what the expected outputs should be does help manage the reality of the IoT deluge. If you know what you are expecting you can match that to what the various sensors do and can present.

I read a lot of leadership posts and books. I guess in fairness I am a leadership junkie. Mostly because over the years I have worked for some great leaders and some leaders that frankly shouldn’t have been where they were.

Let’s take the leadership concept of well being on an island. When a leader has a concept, idea or innovation that is new and different sometimes they end up on an island. When they are on the island you can quickly find out in the end what kind of leader they ultimately are.

Types of leaders (island perspective)

Bunker

Attack

escape

Bunker is the leader that fortifies the island and prepares for attack as a defensive measure. They often won’t take risks beyond the initial situation that caused them to withdraw. They are quite content to have their followers lob grenades at the attackers. This leader is most likely to defend his or her people, regardless.

Some leaders attack not just the ideas but the actual people that disagree with them You have to be careful with leaders like this. They do not care who or what you are doing if you end up in their way. They also may attack without provocation. This leader has very loyal followers.

Leaders who seek egress instead of fortifying and attacking are the ones in the end we all love to follow. They are willing to compromise to reach a solution and in the end they are most likely to move around problems. They however are very likely to run over their own people at times to get to a solution.

People, and leaders are people, cycle through all three. In some cases, as defined many years ago in the Art of War we have to consider what our enemy has. Knowing the what of your enemy only makes you stronger. Knowing the what of your specific leader can help you be successful in moving around their sticking points.

As I said in my opening statement I’ve worked with a number of good leaders and bad leaders over the years. A good leaders knows which of the three styles they are adopting for a scenario and is willing to move around that issue/style/problem by listening. So above the reality of the three styles leaders adapt to, they also need to listen.

I guess in the end good leaders listen. Great leaders hear. The difference sometimes between listening and hearing is the reality of human nature. If you are in one of the three modes above (remember these apply to island situations only) listening is preparing to reply to the person speaking. Hearing is actually stopping, not replying and in the end potentially never replying. Simply accepting that you are in island mode and moving away. Avoiding island mode is the last modality of leadership in the island scenario. It requires a leader willing to hear what people have to say. Sometimes it means the leader has to accept fear as a potential outcome.

In the end you work with good leaders and bad leaders your whole life. A bad leader is the one that let’s a bad thing happen without notifying the person or people involved. They move to bunker mode before they let the team know something is wrong.

It can be scary when you realize what kind of leader you are following. Not to mention following a good leader can be a lot of fun.